by Victoria Rose
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

On March 10, Pathway to Potential held a community organizer training session at the Jewish Community Centre in downtown Windsor.

The day-long event, “Making Poverty Reduction an Election Issue in 2011”, outlined the processes and steps required for developing a common platform and making poverty reduction a serious issue for the next provincial election. The campaign is about awareness on the home-front, “We want to make poverty a key election issue for Windsor-Essex residents, candidates and incumbents.”

The workshop was lead by Mike Balkwill from Put Food in the Budget, a campaign that is pushing for a monthly increase of $100 for adults on social assistance. The campaign is sponsored by the Social Planning Network of Ontario and The Stop Community Food Centre. The concern is that many recipients of social assistance also rely on food banks that are unable to provide fresh food and complete nutrition; a typical food hamper may be filled with processed foods high in refined carbohydrates, sugar, fat, and sodium. An additional $100 would allow an individual to shop for items that a food bank is not able to store like fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, milk, eggs, and butter.  To learn more about why $100 a month would make such a difference, why don’t you take the Do the Math survey?

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